


(The Stairway To) Heaven?

by TC (thecollective)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Demons, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Limbo, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Season/Series 01, Supernatural Reverse Big Bang Challenge 2015, Women of Supernatural, life after death, so many female characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecollective/pseuds/TC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica Moore died on November 2, 2005, killed as a pawn in a larger plan to bring about the Apocalypse. Her story should have ended then. </p><p>Death, as it turns out, is just the beginning. </p><p>Part of the SPN Reversebang 2015 Challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, a giant THANK YOU to my betas and readers: collectiva diva, jacksqueen 16, thugalet, Dr. Darling, and the Collected canadian. Thank you for making me finish this and telling me it would all be worth it. <3
> 
> The artist (liketheriffle_k) gave me an image of Jessica entering heaven. I immediately decided that I wanted a woman-centric SPN fic, because I wanting to give homage to the woman characters who don't get enough attention in fanfic. This story takes place throughout the first season of the show. 
> 
> For me, I always thought Jessica deserved more. This is my way of giving her that. 
> 
> Episode References and dialogue borrowed from: “Pilot,”, “The Phantom Traveler”, “Home,” “Faith,” “Devil’s Trap”  
> Film Influences: The Lovely Bones  
> Lyrics before each chapter are from Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"

_ There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold _

_ And she's buying a stairway to heaven. _ __

* * *

 

She doesn’t remember burning to death. Thank god. But Brady slicing and dicing her? That, that she remembers. She can still feel it—the cold nick of the blade against her flesh. There isn’t anything she could compare it to except that one time she’d cut her hand deeply on a kitchen knife while chopping onions for dinner. The look on Sam’s face as he’d watch the blood drip down her palm—oh god, now she knows why he’d looked so scared.

Oh god. _ Sam. _

Sam’s horror-stricken face, not so different from when she’d hurt her hand, looking up at her as the blood pooled from her belly and onto the floor.

_ Sam _ .

She sees it again, as if it’s just happening now. Brady coming towards her, Brady cutting her, Brady pinning her to the ceiling with scarcely more than a thought.

She blinks. She’s somewhere else, somewhere not-quite-the-real-world. Colors muted. It’s like everything has a soft filter on it, the one that blurs away all the rough edges and make your skin look perfect. It looks like she’s in a crappy 1970s horror movie, the one where the girl never escapes the hotel.

She doesn’t bother to call out for anyone else. She knows she’s dead.

She sees a bag on the floor, knows it’s Sam’s from the way that the zippers are all perfectly aligned, the ends tucked into the last centimeter of the bag. She used to make fun of him for that. She doesn’t recognize the bag next to Sam’s, however. She doesn’t know the haphazard zips, the bits of denim sticking out at the end, obviously packed in a hurry.

There’s a gadget like a walkie-talkie on the table between the two lumpy motel beds, and there, next to it, is her bracelet. It’s her favorite. Or, it was. Sam had bought it for her on their third date on a trip to the local flea market. It’s simple, and she’s worn it so much that the chain is starting to look a little brassy. On their six-month anniversary, Sam had engraved the simple heart charm with the words “In aeternum.”

_ Forever. _

Sam? Where is Sam?

Sam walks in, wearing a suit. He picks up the bracelet, stares at the engraving for a moment, and then stuffs it into his breast pocket. He’s carrying flowers, but not roses, and Jess knows they are for her grave.

She’d always hated roses.

***

_ I should have protected you. I should have told you the truth. _

She wonders what else he lied to her about.

Did he know about Brady? Did he know what Brady was?

***

The first time she ever saw Sam, she had only noticed him because he blocked the light from the window in the library’s third floor study area. She’d sighed in vain at the words in her anatomy textbook, too darkened by his shadow to read clearly. She had been about to ask him to  _ please move his gigantic window-blocking ass _ when he snapped his phone shut angrily and stormed past her.

She never had asked him why he’d been upset that day. Now she wonders if it was something to do with his brother, and the life he’d had before they’d met at Stanford.

The next time she saw Sam, he was helping a goddamn kitten out of a tree because  _ of course _ he was the kind of guy to help a goddamn kitten get down from a tree.

The third time she saw Sam, and the first time she had spoken to Sam, it had been because of a dare from Brady. It had been nearing the holiday season when Brady had convinced her to work the Helping Hands Thanksgiving event. She’d resisted, initially. “C’mon,” Brady had pleaded, “It’ll be fun.” He’d paused. “ _ Sam _ will be there.”

“Who?”

“Don’t play coy with me, Jessica Moore. We both know you want to climb him like a tree.”

She hadn’t denied it, and when Brady had dared her that day to ask Sam if Ents were on his family tree, she hadn’t put up much of a fight.

As she’d walked toward the end of the serving tent where Sam had been working, she noticed his deep forest green shirt. (Later, much later, she had confessed to Brady that it had become her favorite color because she associated it with Sam). It took her several minutes to work up the courage to talk to him, and when she did, all she could do was ask him to help her reach something.

“Um, okay?” He’d always sounded so unsure of himself back then, when they’d first met.

She pointed to a box on the top shelf, uncertain of what was in it. Hopefully it was something she needed. Sam picked it up, but lost his grip on it, and the box tumbled down, raining napkins all around them.

It was somewhere between Sam’s deep belly laugh and her awkward “Hi, I’m Jess and I’m a menace” that she realized that she’d really like to keep Sam around. The “for at least five decades” was totally implied.

***

She’d never really thought about life after death, not beyond what Mrs. Lathrop had told her in Sunday school as a child. Heaven is supposed to be light, soft, full of cherubim. Wherever she is now, it isn’t that.

Time passes slowly here. Or is it fast? She only get glimpses, snippets, of the mortal world—and only when Sam has her bracelet close to him.

A voice she doesn’t recognize says something about “EVP.” It must be Dean, Sam’s brother, the skeezy one that broke into their apartment that night. The brothers, they talk a lot about unexplained phenomenon, and to Jess, it might as well be ancient Greek.

Now, she’s in an airport.

She and Sam had seen  _ The Terminal _ on one of their first dates, and it’s kind of ironic how she empathizes with Tom Hanks’ character now. She, too, feels like she’s waiting endlessly in a terminal, just on the cusp of  _ something else _ .

The airport is more muted colors and she can feel Sam’s panicked urgency though she can’t see him. She wonders if Sam is going back to Stanford at last, to a life that doesn’t include these things, these creatures that go bump in the night. Then again, she’s one of those things now.

It’s more difficult to pick through the cacophony of emotions and thoughts once she’s in the heart of the terminal, a little harder to focus just on Sam. Seriously, there’s  _ something dark _ here. There’s something that brings her closer to the edge here, something that bridges the gap between her and mortality a little more. 

She’s staring longingly at the espresso machine behind the Starbucks counter when she hears the low, rumbling hiss of evil. The last time she’d heard that, Brady had stuck a knife in her stomach. The thing— _ demon _ , her mind helpfully supplies—is filth wrapped in shadows and treachery. It’s like Brady, just not in human form, and now that she’s dead, she sees it for what it is. How could she not have known that such evil had lurked inside of her friend?

“Jessssssica,” the thing hisses. “I know you.”

“You can’t hurt me,” she says. “Not anymore.”

“Not you,” the words slither out like venom, “Sssssssam.”

“What are you going to do to Sam?” Sam doesn’t know about Brady, doesn’t know about this slinking evil in the corridors of the airport. Or does he? She doesn’t know anymore.

“You were just the beginning, Jessssssica,” it says. “Ssssssam Winchessssster hassssss been marked sssssince hissssss birth.”

“What do you mean?”

The demon laughs, and the sounds sends a curl of fear through Jess. “You were chosssssen,” it says before it disappears, leaving her alone and worried that Sam’s dark past is a lot darker than she could have ever imagined.

Later, she hears Sam’s voice chanting in Latin, and she watches the demon be wrenched into an abyss from which she can only hear screams. This is nothing like  _ The Exorcist _ .

***

After that day (or was it night?), she hears Sam chanting in Latin a lot more often. She hasn’t seem him since the day he brought her flowers, and she wonders if his hair is longer now that she isn’t around to remind him to cut it.

She also hears a lot of Led Zeppelin. Occasionally, she wonders if there really could be a stairway to heaven.


	2. Chapter 2

_There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure_

_'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings._

_In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings,_

_Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven._

* * *

 

It was the end of their junior year, and Sam was prepping to take the LSATs in less than two weeks. Basically, this meant she hadn’t seen her boyfriend’s eyes in about six weeks, as they were constantly glued to a textbook. So glued, in fact, that Sam had completely forgotten his wallet in the library (again) the night before. The front desk worker knew Jess and Sam well enough to give it to her, and less than a minute later Jess received a panicked phone call from Sam.

“Jess!” he said. “I lost my wallet. Please, please, please tell me you have it.”

“You left it at the library. Again.”

Sam sighed into the phone. She could hear the tiredness in it, the exhaustion, but she knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he had taken the LSATs. It wasn’t in his nature to give up, and she often wondered from who in his family that drive came from. But Sam didn’t talk much about his family, and even less about his childhood, and Jess knew well enough not to pry. “You’re so close, babe,” she encouraged him. “Don’t worry about your wallet. I’ll bring it to you—with the biggest cup of coffee you’ve ever seen. Cream, no sugar.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Crash and burn.” She only half meant it as a joke.

“I love you t—,” Sam’s voice froze once he realized what he was saying. Jess could practically feel the anxiety rolling off of him and into the phone.

She let him sweat about it for a minute and then she said, “I’ll be there in ten minutes. And Sam? I love you too.”

***

Sam used to call her the “girl of his dreams,” and the irony isn’t lost on her that she’s now closest to him when he’s having a nightmare. She can feel his terror, the imminent dread that something horrible is going to happen. After one particularly awful night, Sam manages to convince his brother that they have to go back to Lawrence, Kansas. Their hometown. She hears, and feels, bits and pieces of their conversation, but mostly she sees the muted tans of the leather interior of their car. And then she hears:

 _Do you think it was the thing that killed Mom and Jessica_?

She knows now why Sam never liked Halloween. Why go out looking for cheap thrills and scares when you know the real thing exists and that it killed your mother? She’s pieced it together over these past months (days? years?) since she died, but she knows for sure when Sam’s nightmares grow more intense, more insistent—she was killed because of who Sam is, whether he knows it or not.

One day, the Winchester brothers enter a house that’s different. She can _feel_ something in the house. It’s a different kind of evil than what killed her, but it is evil nonetheless. She feels something else too, but that thing chooses not to be revealed. She catches a glimpse of Sam, the first in months (at least she thinks it’s ben months), and he’s nervously fidgeting as he walks into a room on the house’s top floor. He’s got a hand in his pocket, and she knows that’s the pocket where he keeps her bracelet. She hopes that it comforts him.

Later, Sam and Dean go to a house that isn’t filled with washed out colors and just the impressions of the mortals that reside in it. For the first time since being killed, she remembers what it is to be alive, to have everything bright and vibrant and intense. She can see for the first time how the Winchesters walk in tandem, and she wonders what kind of childhood the two must have had to produce such synchronicity. They meet a short woman named Missouri. She has a welcoming smile and zero-tolerance policy for bullshit. Jess likes her immediately.

“Oh Sam, I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” Missouri says. The woman looks just past Sam when she says it, right at Jess. The woman looks away and conversation continues. The brothers talk about the evil that is lurking in their childhood home, and Jess wants to tell them that it’s not Brady. She would have felt it.

“Excuse me,” Missouri says, “I need to freshen up a bit.” She pauses by Jess long enough to mutter, “Follow me,” as she leaves the room.

Being noticed after being so long isolated is like a drink of cold water on a hot summer day. Jess wants to drink in Missouri’s attention by the gallon. The psychic leads her into a small bathroom and closes the door. “Wouldn’t do to have the boys overhear us,” Missouri explains. “The older one is skeptic enough of my skills.”

“You can hear me, too?” Jess asks. If she were still human, her voice would croak from disuse.

“Not usually,” Missouri says. “Most spirits are more emotions, impressions, than anything else. You, you’re a bit more complicated than that. You’re not here. You’re not there. Honey, you’re not even a ghost. You’re stuck.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said,” says Missouri. “Now we don’t have much time. If there is evil in that house, and I’d bet my last dollar there is, then we have to move fast. When we get there, you find Mary. Find Mary, and tell her how you died. I’d also bet my last dollar that she’s still there, too.” Missouri pulls out a tube of lipstick and dabs it on. She purses her lips. “There, those spirits won’t get me looking anything less than my best.”

“I bet they’d be more worried about you doing your worst,” says Jess.

Missouri catches her eye in the bathroom mirror. “I can see why Sam loved you.”

“Are you going to tell him that you can see me?” asks Jess.

“That depends. Do you want me to?”

Did she? As far as Jess knew, Sam thought she was at rest. At peace. In heaven, probably. Now that she had seen what his family was into, what would Sam do if he knew that she was stuck somewhere in limbo?

She didn’t want to find out.

“No,” she says. “No, let him think I’m at peace.”

The next time the boys enter their childhood home, Missouri is with them, and Jess can feel the evil that’s residing there even more acutely. It’s not just the dark presence that’s pacing the hallways, threatening to tear the house apart. There’s an older, fouler evil that’s stained the house. But there’s that other presence that’s still there, the one that’s tinged with sadness. Jess follows that feeling to the attic, and she sees a woman in a white nightgown staring down at a photograph of two young boys. _Sam and Dean_.

“You must be Mary,” she says. Mary turns to look at her, and Jess sees the resemblance immediately. “You’re Sam’s mother.”

Mary’s eyes scrape over the very essence of Jess’s soul, it seems like. “Tell me how you died,” Mary says.


	3. Chapter 3

_There's a feeling I get when I look to the west,_

_And my spirit is crying for leaving._

_In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees,_

_And the voices of those who stand looking._

* * *

 

Reliving the pain, the blood, and the flames isn’t pleasant for Jess, but Mary doesn’t seem surprised by anything Jess says about the night she died. In fact, Mary seems interested in an almost professional capacity, asking about the smallest details.

“Did he have yellow eyes?” is the final question Mary asks.

“Um, no,” replies Jess. That’s one thing she’d never forget: Brady’s eyes, usually blue, turning full black and changing everything she knew to be true about the world. “No, they were black.”

Mary sighs, and the action seems very out of place in limbo. “This is worse than they know,” she says.

Jess is about to ask what she means, and then the world is tilted sideways and she feels evil tearing through the floorboards, trying to get at the Winchesters. “What is that?” Jess asks.

“Homework,” Mary replies. “Follow me.”

She leads her downstairs to where Dean is struggling to escape flying knives in the kitchen. “You can’t stop the knives,” Mary says, “but you can slow them.” She steps in the direct path of a steak knife, and Jess sees it slow visibly. Dean doesn’t notice and hides behind the kitchen table.

When Dean leaves the room, and the evil presence has dissipated, Mary reaches down and pulls a knife out of the table.

“Whoa,” Jess says. She tries to do the same, but her hand can’t wrap around the blade’s handle.

“You haven’t proven yourself yet,” Mary says, and it sounds like a revelation to both of them. Jess thinks Mary is about to explain until she stiffens, looks towards the staircase, and disappears. Jess hears a distant thumping, and then Dean screaming Sam’s name.

 _Sam_.

She arrives at Sam’s side in time to see Mary shoving her fingers underneath the electrical cord that’s been wrapped around his neck, loosening it just enough so that Sam won’t die until Dean can shove the hex bag into the wall. Jess hears the evil inside the house, hears it wailing, full of rage and hatred. Then it’s gone. Sam can breathe again. So can Jess.

She’s never seen Sam so pale, and she wants to gather him in her arms, to hold him close until the steady rate of his pulse calms the depths of her anxiety.

If she ever sees Brady again, she’s going to kill him.

The boys and Missouri clean up the house. Jess isn’t sure where Mary’s gone, and she hopes that she didn’t disappear along with the evil.

Jess is watching Sam calm the single mother and her children when Mary reappears, engulfed in flames. Jess rushes to her side but Mary stops her. “No,” she says, “I want you to see.” She touches Jess on the shoulder, lightly, and Mary’s death plays out in front of her, as if Jess had front row seats to a play. Or, Jess thinks bitterly, maybe it’s an execution. “Do you see now?” Mary asks.

“Why did yours have yellow eyes?”

“I made a mistake,” Mary admits. She looks at Sam, sorrow filling her eyes. “My boys will be paying the price for it for the rest of their lives. It’s no mistake that we’re here. You and I, we’re stuck. We’re not in hell, or heaven, and we’re not even ghosts,” she says. “We are in-between.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re stuck. Because of how we died. Evil like that...it spreads like a plague. One touch from a demon and we were rejected from Heaven, but too good for Hell. So here we are. Stuck.”

Dean enters the room at that moment, and the Winchesters and Missouri make to leave. Jess knows she doesn’t have much longer with Mary, and there’s so much she wants to ask. Instead she says, “Sam looks like you.”

Mary’s face softens. “I know.” The wistfulness is quickly replaced by eyes widened by fear. “It hasn’t left,” she warns Jess. “Don’t let the boys leave. It hasn’t left.”

And then Sam walks out the front door and Jess is torn from the house, destined to follow Sam as long as he has her bracelet. She doesn’t know how to keep Dean and Sam from leaving their childhood home, and she fights against being sucked back into the oblivion she was in before Missouri came around. She claws her way back into mortal reality to see Sam sitting in the passenger’s seat, eyes closed. She wants more than anything to tuck away the errant curl of his hair behind his ear, and she lets herself. When she does, she swears she can feel his hair’s silky strands against her skin. “Sam,” she says. “Wake up.”

***

“Wake up,” he said as he pulled the blanket away from her.

She scrunched her body, her toes curling in from the cold. “No,” she mumbled. Her words were muffled by the pillow. “Don’t hafta. No class.” She wrapped her arms around the pillow and pulled it closer, as if that would bring back the blanket’s warmth.

Sam climbed into the bed next to her. _Their_ bed, her half-asleep mind so helpfully reminded her. His body was warm where hers was cold and she pressed back into him. “Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well in _our_ new home?”

 _Our new home_.

She cracked one eye open. The pale light of morning filtered in through the window, the window that was most definitely not the one in her old dorm room. She rolled over to face Sam. She kissed him lightly on the lips, not caring too much about morning breath because, hell, he’d seen her after a 36-hour study binge. “Good morning, live-in man slave,” she said.

He laughed, pulling her in closer to him, tucking her head against his chest. “Live-in man slave, huh?” he said. “Well, I did make breakfast.” He laughed again. She could feel the reverberations of his laughter, and she never wanted to move.

***

“Wake up,” she says again. “ _Sam._ ” She is almost yelling now, and the muted colors around the edges of her vision flare bright red. Sam jolts awake, startling Dean.

“What’s up, man?” Dean asks. “Another dream?”

Sam rubs a hand over his face. He looks around, and Jess knows he’s looking for her. “Go back,” she says. “Sam, you have to go back.”

He tilts his head, the way he used to when he listened to the eleven o’clock news. He knows it’s important, she thinks. And she says again, “Go back, _now_.”

It takes some convincing from Sam, but Dean drives the Impala back to their childhood home for an impromptu stakeout.

“So tell me again what we are still doing here?” asks Dean.

Sam leans over, peering at the house. It looks quiet. Peaceful. Jess knows it isn’t. She can feel the evil even from the other side of the street. It oozes like an infected wound.

“I don’t know. I-I just still have a bad feeling,” Sam says.

Jess doesn’t wait for them to finish their conversation. She pulls against the current, the one emanating from her bracelet in Sam’s pocket. She doesn’t know if she can fight this evil, but it’s threatening the children and she can’t leave Mary to face it alone. She pushes hard and the bracelet’s pull tears at her, tugging at the lining of her soul. She screams but keeps pushing against it, and then with a pop she’s inside the house. She can’t feel the bracelet any longer. She doesn’t stop to think of why.

“Mary?” she cries. “Mary?”

The evil in the house burns at her flayed soul, scorching the tears that breaking the bracelet’s sway had given her. She heads for the stairs, for Sam’s old bedroom. She finds Mary there, engulfed in flames, standing between the evil and the little girl. “Jessica,” she says, “Protect the boy.”

Jessica rushes down the hall to the boy’s room, and she feels the evil lurking there, pacing like a tiger. She doesn’t know how she does it, but she surrounds the boy with her presence, and she knows the evil can’t touch him now. “Get out,” she says. The evil has no shape; it’s a blurred mess of hatred and foulness and Jess wants no part of it near this child. “Get. Out.” she says again. It makes a horrible choking sound and then it disappears to another part of the house. Sam runs in a second later, scoops the child out of his crib. The kid is surprisingly silent, but Sam doesn’t seem to notice. The boy looks right at Jess, and that is the last thing she sees before she’s pulled through the floor into the kitchen.

Evil presses in, threatening to take every inch of what’s left of her. Its acrid stench chokes her, and if she were still human she would vomit. “Jesssssssica,” it hisses. It’s not like the demon in the airport. This is something different. Not as powerful but no less evil. “Jesssssssica,” it hisses again. “You can’t ssssssave him. He’sssss been claimed.” She shoves against the evil, cursing it. It laughs at her, if laughter is what she could call it. It’s a dark chortling that threatens to suck the life out everything in the house.

She screams for Mary. She screams for Sam. The evil laughs again. “Sssssam Winchessssster,” it says. She feels it pull Sam into the house. It traps him against the wall. She knows it’s pressing into Sam the way it is her. It wants to choke him, to kill him, but it resists its own temptation and Jessica can’t understand why. Mary shows up then, wrapped in flames and a mother’s protective rage. With little more than a look from her, the evil is forced to shrink away from Jess. “Hold it up there,” she says, gesturing to the ceiling. “I want to talk to my boys first.”

“But you can’t,” Jess says. “It’s impossible.”

Mary smiles at her through the flames, and Jess sees so much of Sam that it hurts.  Jess sees now that being a Winchester means equal parts anguish and selflessness. “I can now,” she tells Jess. “Ask Missouri. She knows.” She burns brighter then as she walks up to her sons. Jess holds the evil in place like Mary asks, even though part of her wants to be the one to talk to Sam, to have him see her again. But it’s not her moment, she knows.

“Sam,” Mary says, “I’m sorry.”

The look on Sam’s face is enough to make Jess cry, if she still had tear ducts. The evil struggles, but she wraps herself around it like she did the boy, with scarcely more than a thought. It’s instinctive, she thinks, this urge to protect Sam and his brother. She thinks she understands Mary a bit more now.

Mary turns away from her boys and Jess can see vengeance written in her eyes next to the heartbreak. “You,” Mary says, looking up at the evil. “Get out of my house. And let go of my son.”

The evil writhes, pulling and tearing at Jessica in its struggle for freedom. If Jess were it, she would be afraid of Mary Winchester too. Mary burns again, bright and hot, and Jess can see that she is sucking in all the energy around her, becoming a spirit supernova. Her eyes intent on the evil, she channels all that energy into it, burning it out of the house, zapping it from existence.

The evil is gone. So is Mary.


	4. Chapter 4

_ And it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune, _

_ Then the piper will lead us to reason. _

_ And a new day will dawn for those who stand long, _

_ And the forests will echo with laughter. _

* * *

 

Jess feels like she’s been poured into a vat of molasses. Everything around her is slow, everything requiring more energy than she has left. The evil is gone, but she can feel its stink oozing from the shredded linings of her soul, like pus from an infected wound.   She follows the pull of her bracelet, the tugging is constant even if she knows she can break free of it now, because honestly even knowing she’s near Sam is the only thing that makes her feel better. 

Maybe if she just closes her eyes for a minute, if she just lets herself slip from the plane of existence, this pain will stop. She lingers there on the cusp of disappearing until Missouri’s voice pulls her out of the trance again. “Don’t you even think about it,” the psychic chides. “Don’t you dare.” Missouri waves her into the kitchen. Jess can see the boys at the edge of her vision, but they don’t seem to be paying any attention to Missouri. The older woman chants under her breath and holds her hands near where Jessica’s heart would be. The feeling of being stuck in molasses dissipates, and it’s no longer such a struggle to be left in the mortal world. 

“Thank you,” Jess says. 

“That poltergeist was a nasty one,” Missouri says, “It latched right onto you and poured more evil in, like salt in an open wound.” She pulls a mug out of the cupboard and begins to fix coffee for her and the Winchesters. “You met Mary?”

“Yes,” Jess says. 

“You know how Mary died?”

“Yes,” Jess says. “She died just like I did.” She remembers Mary’s face just before she disappeared and then she tells Missouri, “Mary said you’d know how I can talk to Sam again.”

Missouri sighs. “I saw that you both died the same,” she says, “In Sam’s mind. That means you’re stuck here just like she was, poor woman. You’ve suffered enough but you can’t move on, not like you are now. You’ve got tests in front of you, sweetie.” Missouri looks at her closely, as if Jess were a mannequin in a store window. “Well, look at you,” the psychic says, voice full of pride, “You’ve done the first one all on your own.”

“Tests?” Jess asks. “What are you talking about?”

Missouri tells her that she’s been “tainted by the devil.” Being killed by a demon like that, according to Missouri, means a little bit of that evil gets into your soul, and it stays with you after you’ve passed. Where Jess is, it isn’t the Afterlife, she’s on the edge of Limbo, the first circle of hell, far enough on the outer rims to avoid the worst of it but still, it’s somewhere she doesn’t deserve to be. To get to Heaven, Missouri says, Jess needs to prove that she’s unaffected by that evil—by proving her strength, her worthy mind, and her pure spirit. “You’ve got one down honey,” Missouri says. “Looks like you’re stronger than you think.”

“What will these tests look like?” asks Jess. “And will it let me talk to Sam again?”

“I don’t know,” Missouri admits. “When you’ve finished them, you’ll be moving on and going to a place you deserve. You don’t deserve to be stuck here, hon.” She gives Jess a look that reminds her of her mother. “You need to move on,” Missouri says. “You and Sam both.”

It’s then that Dean sticks his head in and asks Missouri who she’s talking to. “Never you mind, boy,” the psychic chides him. “You wouldn’t know them anyway.”

Dean looks confused but lets the woman lead him out of the kitchen carrying two mugs of coffee. Jess stays in the kitchen and wonders if moving on will hurt more or less than being so close to Sam and yet so far away.

***

She drifts in and out of Sam’s life after they leave Missouri’s. The Winchesters’ lifestyle, which was at first so strange and terrifying to her, now seems like that last track on her Blink- 182 album that always got stuck on repeat in her car--you didn’t mind at first, and then later all you want to do is turn it off. 

She wonders if she could have accepted this part of Sam’s life if she hadn’t died.  

***

When she sees Meg’s face, her  _ real _ face, for the first time, she screams.

She hopes Sam can, in some way, hear her. 

***

“I can’t believe you’ve never seen  _ Citizen Kane _ ,” Sam said. “It’s a film classic.”

“Yeah, for pretentious hipster nerds,” she replied. “The film is irrelevant to a 21st century audience.” She knew that wasn’t true.  _ Citizen Kane _ was one of the few films that perfectly captured the isolation and pessimism to be found at the top of a capitalist societal structure, but she said it just to watch Sam’s face scrunch up in disapproval. 

He tugged her down on the sofa next to him and pushed play on the DVD player’s remote. “Watch,” he said. “I promise it’s worthwhile.”

She spent most of the film watching his facial features change in reaction to Kane’s narcissistic destructive path into ownership and egotism. She thought of the essay she had stashed away in a drawer somewhere, written all about the possible interpretations of  the line “Rosebud.” Just before the ending scene, she leaned over and said, “You know, I have seen this one. Still don’t think it’s that great.” 

For that, Sam dumped the bowl of popcorn over her head.

***

Sam’s emotions have become a near constant presence in Jess’s consciousness, like the hum of the air conditioning unit in her childhood home. 

It comforts her.

***

She’s lounging in the backseat of the Impala, when she feels a sharp spike of anxiety through Sam’s connection to her bracelet. Sam has never been this anxious, and when she sees him carrying Dean’s limp and unresponsive body, she understands why. She can see the lingering hints of death around the older Winchester, and later, when the doctor gives Sam his brother’s fatal diagnosis, she wonders if Dean will end up like her, if they’ll spend eternity watching over Sam. 

She hopes, for Sam’s sake, that miracles do happen. 

***

The miracle that happens is not the one she expects. In fact, it’s not a miracle at all, as Dean also quickly realizes. It’s no act of God, she thinks, as she sees the grim man in the three piece suit standing near the reverend, it’s just substitution, a transference of energy, or in this case, death. 

It’s a reaper, according to Dean, and she would have thought that the reaper would have a more morbid look, but she can see the sensibility of a three piece suit rather than a bulky robe and scythe. She follows Sam and his brother throughout the case as they figure out who’s controlling the reaper, and it’s the second time the reaper appears that she sees the chains surrounding it. Faint, even to her not-mortal eyes, but definitely there. She understands the feeling of being trapped, of being unable to  _ move _ . 

When Sam and Dean leave to confront the reverend’s wife, she follows Dean instead of Sam. She doesn’t know why, but she’s worried that the reaper will collect Dean’s soul. She's right, and his soul looks like shards of starlight being sucked into a black hole. It would be beautiful if she weren't scared for him. Taut chains surround the reaper, and she can tell he (is it a he? Do reapers have gender?) struggles against the commands of the reverend’s wife. She reaches in and pulls at the chains, hoping that she can loosen them just enough so the reaper won't completely take Dean’s soul. She's counting on the fact that if the reaper had a choice, this isn't what he would be doing. 

She yanks as hard as she can, and her concentration is so intense that she forgets that she also needs to focus on staying in the real world, and she loses her grip as she slips back into limbo. She hopes that Sam can save his brother, because although she'd like to get to know Dean, she doesn't want it to happen for many, many years. The world around her fades to the muted greys and beiges she's become accustomed to. She remembers a day from her childhood when her uncle took her sailing. In mid afternoon, they came into stormy weather, and the twenty foot swells threatened to capsize the boat. Her uncle had tied a rope from the mast around her waist, so that she wouldn't be lost overboard. Falling back into limbo feels like falling into stormy seas, but this time Jess has no tether. 

Jess hadn’t prayed much while she was alive, but now that she is dead, she’s not ready to be done, not ready to never see Sam again. She cries for help, even if she doesn’t know who she is crying to. 

_ Please _ .

A constant pressure on her pushes her back into reality, and it  _ hurts _ , like a bandage being ripped off too quickly. 

She looks around. Dean is gone, but the soothing and familiar connection to Sam settles back into place. She’s relieved because she can feel Sam, and she knows he’s alright. 

The reaper stands before her, and the gaunt and emaciated creature she saw before has been replaced by what looks like a distinguished older gentleman with the grimmest demeanor Jess has ever seen. “Jessica Moore,” he says. “You do not belong here.” The gentleman’s voice is as somber as his appearance. 

“I’m stuck,” she says. “At least, that’s what the psychic—Missouri—told me.”

The reaper’s eyes rake over her, as if her soul’s reflection can tell her life’s story. For all she knows, it might. “You are different,” he says at last. “But you would only be ‘stuck’ if there were no way out.” He snaps his fingers once, twice. Three times. In a flash, the scenery around them shifts. She’s not in the mortal world, or oblivion, and she knows this because the sky crackles with lightning the color of freshly drawn blood. The air is thick with the stench of sulfur, and she kind of wants to retch. Visceral reactions like that almost make her feel human again.

“Where am I?” she chokes out.

“You have questions that you need answered,” replies the reaper. “You might find the answers here.” He raises his hand to snap his fingers again, but Jessica asks him to wait. She doesn’t know where she is, or why she’s there, or if she can ever leave again. 

"What am I supposed to do now?" she asks. 

He points across an empty plane of charred, scarred ground. A battlefield, Jess thinks. But a battlefield for who? "You are not finished, Jessica Moore," he says. And then with a snap of his fingers that Jess thinks probably isn't necessary, he's gone. 

***

"Jessica, it takes two seconds to lock the door!"

"I forgot. Shit like that happens, Sam," she snapped. "Are you trying to tell me no one in your family ever forgot to lock a damn door?"

Sam's face darkened. "This has nothing to do with them. This has to do with me making sure you are safe, and I can't do that if you can't keep a door locked."

It was their first real, honest-to-God fight after they moved in together. Jess had woken up late for class—Sam was already gone to his first lecture of the day—had thrown on yoga pants and a hoodie, forgetting to lock the door behind her.  At the time, it seemed silly because nothing had been stolen. 

She stormed into the kitchen and retrieved her hoodie and car keys. "This is stupid," she said. "Nothing happened. I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'd say I'm sorry, but I'm only fucking human and I make mistakes. Just like everyone else." Her hand was on the doorknob, ready to leave and come back after Sam had a chance to cool down. Then Sam hit the wall so hard it shook, knocking the kitchen clock off the wall. When she turned to look at him, he was cradling his hand.

"I'm sorry," he said. He looked down at his knuckles, which were red with blood. 

"You idiot," she said. She grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and had him hold it against his swelling hand. She fetched the first aid it and started cleaning the scrapes. Sam didn't flinch at all, and she wondered how often he'd been patched up like this before she met him. 

"Please don't leave," he said. His voice was as raw as his hand. 

"Idiot," she said again. "I'm not going anywhere."

Looking back, she knows now why Sam had reacted the way he did, and it doesn't seem so ridiculous at all. 


	5. Chapter 5

_ Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, _

_ The piper's calling you to join him, _

_ Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know _

_ Your stairway lies on the whispering wind? _

* * *

 

If Jess had ever once imagined how she was going to spend her life after death, this is definitely not it. There is supposed to be fluffy clouds and cherubim, she thinks not for the last time; her afterlife should not be a desolate and endless wasteland that may or may not be inhabited by demons. 

A spiral of smoke appears in front of her. The stench of sulfur is so strong that Jess practically chokes. The smoke takes form, and Jess screams, just like she did the first time she saw Meg's true face.  Well, this realm definitely had demons. The demon is so much uglier in this plane—wherever she is—than in the real world. What was blurred in shadows for the demon at the airport is now harshly realized in jutted angles. Jess feels evil, real evil, so much more acutely here, and Missouri's words echo through her mind: "It latched right onto you and poured more evil in, like salt in an open wound." 

Was this demon going to stain her with more evil? Make it impossible for her to ever leave this half-existence and fully move on? 

(Move on? When did that become her plan? Is that why the reaper abandoned her here?)

The demon stretches to its full height, which is smaller than Jess would have expected but still large enough to remind her that she's the powerless one. "Human!" it shrieks. It doesn't hiss like the poltergeist or the last demon Jess encountered. In fact, it sounds pissed off that Jessica is in its domain, wherever this domain is. "Human," it says again, and its breath is by far the foulest thing about the demon. The stench—a gross combination of rotten eggs and old banana peels—burns Jess's eyes, which is strange in itself. She's  _ real _ here, more or less, and she'd forgotten how powerful the sense of smell could be. Bile gags her, burns her throat, and she retches it out. Right on the demon's feet. 

It growls at her. "Pathetic human," it taunts. 

Jess isn't sure why she is the pathetic one when the demon is as nasty as a dirty diaper and as vile as the dumpster behind a sushi restaurant. She says nothing, however, because she knows that her afterlife will come to abrupt end if the demon views her as any kind of threat. 

The demon circles her, tsking as it evaluates her soul. "I know who you are." Its voice is guttural yet feminine, and Jess knows that this demon is more powerful than any other demon she's yet met. Even Brady. "You are Sam Winchester's bitch, aren't you?" It slashes at her, fast as anything Jess has ever seen. She barely leaps back in time to avoid its razor-sharp claws. It cackles, and Jess gets the distinct impression that she's nothing more than prey to the ages-old evil in front of her. "Little Winchester's bitch," it drawls. "Right here in front of me. The Boss will be so pleased with me." It slashes at her again, but Jess knows now that it's just toying with her. If it wanted to hurt her, she'd be dead (can she die again?) already. 

"What do you want with me?"

It cackles again. "I want to give Sam back to you."

***

It was the middle of the night, and the moon was full. Its rays peeked in through their bedroom window, bathing them in a pale glow. It was a warm night, too warm to sleep in clothes according to Sam. “You just want to see me naked in the moonlight,” she said. 

“Sounds like a song,” he replied. 

They lay face-to-face, and Jess could picture them doing just this when they were thirty, forty, sixty, ninety. She wanted that, and so much more, with Sam. 

He took her hand and covered it with his own. He placed their entwined fingers on his chest, over his heart, so she could feel its beat beneath her fingertips. Her bracelet reflected the moonlight onto Sam’s face. He glanced at the inscription and smiled. “ _ In aeternum, _ ” he whispered to her just before he kissed her goodnight. 

***

The demon offers her the opportunity to reunite with Sam. In the real world, in a real body. She could touch him, kiss him, hold him again. But there’s a catch, there has to be. “No catch,” it singsongs. “You just have to let me help you. That’s all.” It taps its claws against her forehead. “ _ See. _ ”

And Jess does. She sees Sam reunited with his father, battling  _ vampires _ , of all things. She sees the short stretch of Sam’s life as a hunter, sees him stabbed to death and dying in Dean’s arms in less than  year. The vision shifts, and she sees her and Sam living in the Victorian house they used to drive by every Sunday. She sees him at the end of a long church aisle waiting for her. She sees the tears in his eyes the first time he holds their child. She sees his first grey hair and the crinkles around his eyes becoming wrinkles as the years pass. She holds his hand as he breathes his last at eighty-four. It’s a lifetime in a second, and it  _ hurts _ Jess in ways she didn’t know she could hurt. 

“Don’t you see that Sam needs you?” the demon asks. “Don’t you see that he will die if you don’t save him?”

She remembers what the other demon and the poltergeist had said about Sam. That he was marked. Claimed. Going along with this demon—Ruby, it said its name was—would be going along with the things that had evil plans for Sam, the things that had killed her in the first place. “No,” she says.

“No?”

“No.”

Behind the demon, another form materializes, one made of pure light. It sneaks up behind the demon, and as it comes closer Jess notices that it is easily twice the height of the demon, with wings that tower over it and look like spun silver. It holds a short sword that gleams like lightning in one of its hands. The demon doesn’t sense the other being’s arrival until the blade pierces its back. Ruby lets out an otherworldly shriek and disappears in a pillar of smoke. 

The being sheathes its sword. “A human soul?” Its voice is flat, not noticeably feminine or masculine. Jess can feel the power in it. “A human soul,” it repeats, “that is not condemned to Hell. Jessica Moore, what brought you here?”

“A reaper brought me here,” replies Jess. “Wherever ‘here’ is.”

“‘Here’ is a battlefield,” the being replies. “The universe’s oldest war is waged here.”

“Which war?”

“In your human Bible, I believe it would be described in the book of Revelation.”

So the being is probably an angel. Great. “Well, uh, thank you for getting rid of that demon,” Jess says. Is she supposed to be more formal when speaking to a member of the Heavenly Host?

“It is my duty,” the angel replies. It peers at Jess. Jess is beginning to get tired of people being able to know all about her by looking at her soul. “Why did the reaper bring you here?” the angel asks. 

“He told me that I would find the answers I seek here.”

“And have you?”

“I’m not sure,” Jess answers truthfully. “I want to complete the tests that will get me un-stuck, but I don’t know what they are or how to finish them.”

“You have completed two.”  
“I have?” When did she finish the second one? And how is she supposed to figure out the third?

“Yes, the reaper knew that by bringing you here, you would be tempted to make a deal with the Devil. In this case, the demon offered you exactly what you desire most, didn’t it?”

Jess nods. 

“You rejected what you desire most for the greater good. That has proven the quality of your mind,” the angel tells her. 

“Now what do I do?”

“I think that the third test will soon present itself to you.” The light grows brighter, almost blinding. “I can take you to Samuel Winchester, if you wish.”

_ Sam _ . 

“Yes, please.” 

The angel unfurls its wings and Jess gasps at the sight of them. Raw power crackles through the air around the angel. “Close your eyes,” it says. It places one hand on Jess’s forehead and hell’s battlefield disappears. 

***

Sam had been gone for less than three days and Jess already missed him. She wished he’d return her phone calls, but she respected that he hadn’t seen his brother for a long while, and his dad for even longer. Let them have their manly family bonding hunting trip, she thought. It might even fix a few of the bridges that had been burned. 

In the meantime, she had a bottle of wine and a good book. It was chilly that night, and Jess padded back to her closet to grab a sweater. She stared at the selection for a minute or two, and she missed Sam more intensely than before. She grabbed her phone and dialed Sam’s number. Voicemail. “Hey it’s about 10:20,” she said. “I don’t know what you and Dean are up to, but just don’t get arrested.” She laughed. She closed the closet and went to Sam’s dresser instead, looking for his favorite Stanford sweatshirt. She found it at the bottom of the top drawer, trapped by a dozen other shirts. She tugged it free. Something fell out of it, landing on the floor with a soft thud. 

A velvet ring box. 

“Anyway, I miss you.” She carefully folded the box back into the sweater and replaced it in the drawer, resisting the urge to open it. She’d let Sam surprise her with at least that much. 

“Hurry home soon, okay? I love you.” She snapped her phone shut, ending the voicemail. 

***

The angel brings her to the side of a long stretch of darkened highway. It’s late at night and there are no street lamps. The angel points to the east. “They’ll be driving by here in forty-three seconds,” it says. “And time passes differently on the battlefield. I don’t know how long it’s been since you have seen him, but it is likely that some time has passed.”

“Thank you,” Jess says. The angel unfurls its wings once more. “Wait,” says Jess. “What’s your name?”

“Anael,” the angel says before it disappears. 

True to Anael’s word, the Impala shows up a few seconds later. It’s Sam driving, which Jess finds unusual, and there’s a third passenger in the car. She lets the bracelet pull her back into the car. Dean’s bleeding out in the backseat, and an older man is nearly unconscious in the front seat. There’s a pistol on the front seat between Sam and the other man, and Jess wonders just how long she’d been gone. She tests her connection to Sam’s emotions, and she feels his anxiety. He’s driving fast, his mind focused on getting his brother and father to the hospital. 

So the other passenger is the elusive John Winchester? 

“Look, just hold on, all right?” Sammy tells his father. “The hospital is only ten minutes away.”

From the looks of Dean, ten minutes might as well be ten years. 

“I’m surprised at you, Sammy,” John replies. “Why didn’t you kill it? I thought we saw eye-to-eye on this. Killing this demon comes first. Before me. Before everything.”

Sam’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror, checking on his brother in the backseat. “No sir, not before everything.”

Jess sees Sam the way she’d never gotten to when she was alive. He’s still her Sam, but she knows that he’s part of something so much bigger than anything they could have had if she were still breathing. 

She feels it, then. There’s a pair of headlights coming from the south. Sam doesn’t see it. He’s too focused on getting his family to the hospital. The lights get closer and closer, no signs of slowing. 

Jess remembers how Mary slowed the knives so Dean had time to duck. She remembers how Mary burned out the poltergeist from her house, how she used the energy surrounding her to stomp it from existence. 

“Look we’ve still got the Colt. We still have the one bullet left,” Sam is saying,. “We just have to start over, all right?”

The lights—a big rig truck—are nearly on top of them. Jess focuses on pulling in all the energy from around her, sucking it in like deep breaths of air. She can’t stop the truck, she knows that, but maybe she can slow it just enough. 

“I mean, we already found the demon--” 

She surrounds the Winchesters, covering them like she would a small child with a blanket. The truck slams into the Impala, into her. Two black, soulless eyes peer at her from the driver’s seat. “You can’t have them,” she tells the demon. It steps down out of the truck. 

She flickers in and out of existence. She hopes that what she did was enough.


	6. Chapter 6

_ There walks a lady we all know _

_ Who shines white light and wants to show _

_ How everything still turns to gold. _

_ And if you listen very hard _

_ The tune will come to you at last. _

_ When all are one and one is all _

_ To be a rock and not to roll. _

_ And she's buying a stairway to heaven. _

* * *

 

Sam finally falls asleep hours later in the waiting room of the hospital. It’s just before sunrise. Jess knows this is her last chance to say goodbye. Soon she will disappear like Mary did, and she doesn’t know what will happen to her then. She uses what little energy she has left to nudge Sam’s subconscious. He’s dreaming about her, and that makes it easy for her to tap right into his emotions. He’s dreaming about the night she died.

“It’s not your fault, Sam,” she says. “None of this is your fault.” He stirs. She wishes he could see her the way he did Mary. She sends all that she feels for him, every bit of it, through their connection. She runs her fingers through his hair one last time. His hand goes to the pocket where her bracelet is, patting it to make sure it’s still there. He relaxes and goes back to sleep. 

***

It was their second date, which was supposed to be a quick trip for coffee since they both had exams to study for. After spending an hour in the coffee shop, they walked around the neighborhood, each holding lukewarm coffees they’d forgotten to drink because they were too wrapped up in conversation. They ended up wandering into an empty park; all the children had gone home before sunset. 

She saw Sam look longingly at the playground. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll race you to the swingset.” 

“What do I get if I win?”

“You get to be the winner.” And with that she took off toward the playground. 

Sam yelped and then he followed her. It didn’t take him long to catch up with her, and in the end he beat her by half a second. He whooped his victory. 

“I let you win,” Jess said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jess replied. She wrapped her arms around Sam’s neck. “Because I don’t kiss losers.” 

Kissing Sam felt a lot like watching the sunrise after a long winter’s night. 

***

In the middle of the hallway, a staircase appears. She knows it’s for her. Jess climbs it, following the long curl of its spiral to the very top. Anael appears then, silver wings glinting in the light. “You’ve proven yourself, Jessica Moore. You’ve passed the third test,” Anael says. The angel’s face, which is no better described than like looking straight into a thunderstorm, softens. “Your sacrifice saved the Righteous Man.” 

Is that what they call Sam in Heaven? “What will happen to Sam?” Jess asks.   
“There are many plans for the Winchesters,” Anael says, “but I do not know any of them, but I can tell you that they are being watched over.” It opens a door for Jess, and the cinnamon-sweet scent of apple pie wafts through the open door. “Go in,” Anael tells her. 

The angel heads down the same stairway that Jess just climbed up. “You won’t come with me?” Jess asks.

The angel laughs, and the sound reminds Jess of a bell choir. “No,” it says. “I have had enough of Heaven, and of the battlefield.” It pauses. “I hear 1985 was a good year. Goodbye, Jessica Moore.”

“Goodbye, Anael.” The angel disappears with a flutter of wings. 

Jess enters through the door Anael had opened for her. It’s a simple kitchen, with long countertops and a solid oak table in the middle of the room. At the far end, by the stove, a blonde woman stands with her back to Jess.

“Hello?” says Jess. 

The woman turns around. It’s Mary Winchester. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she says. “The pie is cool enough to taste. I hope you like apple?”

Jess nods. 

Mary smiles brightly. “Set the table and then we’ll finish cooking.” She ticks off fingers. “Set it for five.” She gestures to a stack of plates on one of the counters. 

Jess takes the plates. When she turns back to the table, she sees her bracelet sitting there, the inscription as perfect as the day Sam had it done. 

_ In aeternum.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are love. You can find the LJ masterpost [here.](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/260288.html)
> 
> You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/dearcollectress) or [Tumblr.](http://casual-female-viewer.tumblr.com/)


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